Ouya Changes The Terms Of Its Free The Games Fund

Ouya's Julie Uhrman delivered a message earlier today on the console's official blog detailing some changes coming to the Free the Games Fund, which offers additional funding to Kickstarter games in exchange for temporary Ouya exclusivity. Uhrman also posted a video, which you can see below, where she admitted that, "the program isn't working," and they are thankful for all the feedback.

Initially, the Free the Games Fund would match funds for games that reached a minimum goal of $50,000. That number has been lowered to $10,000. Ouya will now match funding to a project's goal, as opposed to how much the game raises. For every $10,000 matched, that's how many months a game must be an Ouya exclusive, up to six months. Developers are also allowed to release their games on PC as well, making them technically not entirely exclusive, but exclusive to television-based consoles.

Ouya has also eliminated the bonus, which offered $100,000 dollars to the Kickstarter able to acquire the most funds.

Perhaps the most obvious change to stem from the program's controversy, comes from the new requirement of a minimum of 100 backers. One of the most controversial aspects of the Free the Games Fund was the ease in which developers could fund themselves. It's pretty easy to throw money at a project if there is insurance that you will get it back in a matter of months. One such Kickstarter game, Gridiron Thunder, was suspecting of doing this. Alongside Ouya's announcement of changes coming to the program, Gridiron Thunder developer MogoTXT announced that it was backing out of the Free the Games fund, as it had already acquired enough funding to complete the game without the need for additional outside help.

Our TakeOuya and Julie Uhrman's hearts are definitely in the right place with the Free the Games Fund. In concept it's a great idea, but as we've seen, in practice it has some wrinkles. These changes are helpful, and also open up the pool of money to more developers, which means more games, which is a good thing.

The Ouya is certainly trying to get some games outside of Towerfall but losing this uphill battle. I would love to try an Ouya but right now that's as far as I'm willing to go. Too many other next gen consoles coming that outweigh all these little boxes with big hopes. Sorry gaming industry I'm just overwhelmed with all your toys and games right now.

The Ouya made a valiant run for it and it sadly just missed the mark. I would say that the majority of people who have purchased one use it as a cute portable emulator. I have nothing but respect for what they tried to do but in the end if you don't have the games you're doomed.

None of this will matter until they fix some very big issues.
1) The Ouya is now almost ridiculously underpowered. And...
2) The Ouya controller is well known to be functionally broken. With Vita TV, who in their right mind is going to put up with that?

Its good that they modified this, but as a developer, I still feel a strong apprehension to the "little system that could." Largely because I feel that the "demo everything, emulate the rest" policy of the Ouya is self-destructive.

It's logically far too soon to call it a failure, and I'll give it the continued benefit of the doubt. But it needs to do what MS did--and make changes for the better--even if they're against their original selling points. Dump the demos. Dump the emulators.